Review: Forced Entertainment turn Shakespeare into tabletop storytelling on South Yorkshire tour
The Sheffield-based company are staging six Shakespeare pairings across South Yorkshire, with storytellers using everyday objects to retell 18 plays in all.
Forced Entertainment, a long-established experimental company based in Sheffield, have begun their South Yorkshire Tour with six plays by Shakespeare being presented in Sheffield, Doncaster and Barnsley - making 18 plays in all. Alan Payne reviews Selected Works: Table Top Shakespeare.
In each of the venues two plays are presented each night, one actor relating the story of each of the plays, using a one-metre tabletop and an array of simple everyday objects. These objects represent Shakespeare’s characters and take on a life of their own. It’s an original approach.
Yet it has a precedent in a speech made by Launce, a servant, in the earliest of Shakespeare’s plays, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, when he talks about his family, using old shoes to represent his mother and father, a staff to represent his sister, and a hat to represent the maid.
In a vivid and playful way, the plots of the plays are laid bare and interactions between characters reduced to their essentials. The storytellers use their own language to describe what’s happening. On the opening night in Sheffield, The Two Gentlemen of Verona was paired with Macbeth. A fascinating combination. The first centres on two young men from a privileged background, Valentine and Proteus, finding their friendship challenged by their love for the same young woman, unaware that their conduct is being scrutinized by their servants.
The second, also about betrayal, but much darker, centres on a powerful couple, who discover the corrosive effect of ambition when morality counts for nothing. The audience was immediately put at their ease by the storytellers, Claire Marshall and Richard Lowden, who handled the objects with delicacy and wit, and teased out some of the dilemmas that are relevant to us all, not least the question of how women are treated by men, and what it means to be who we are.
The use of the objects had a strangely levelling effect, so that in retrospect the minor characters seem just as important as the major ones, questioning the idea that a play must have a hero or central character.
This democratic undercurrent is in line with the company’s ethos: “Our vision is that our work creates a space which allows people of all backgrounds to rethink the world, their place and potential in it.”
In this vision, the ability to connect with an audience is vital. Did Claire and Richard do this? Without a doubt. Their tact, tone of voice, sense of humour, and inspired improvisation was uplifting.
“You could have heard a pin drop.”
South Yorkshire Tour Dates
Sheffield Theatres
November 11: Much Ado About Nothing / Richard 111
November 12: The Merchant of Venice / The Tempest
Cast, Doncaster
November 13: The Comedy of Errors / King Lear
November 14 (afternoon): Romeo and Juliet / Julius Caesar
November 14: (evening) Love’s Labour Lost / Hamlet
Barnsley Civic
November 17: Coriolanus / Measure for Measure
November 18: The Winter’s Tale / A Midsummer Night’s Dream
November 19: Twelfth Night / Othello